Multiple long-term conditions

Why the Financial Shield is needed now more than ever

20 September 2022

4 min read

In this guest blog, Damon Gibbons, Executive Director of Centre for Responsible Credit, reflects on the complex reasons why tailored support for people struggling with their finances is needed now more than ever.

Damon Gibbons

Executive Director of Centre for Responsible Credit

Financial problems have a negative impact on people’s health, and poor health often has a negative impact on people’s financial situation. Once people become locked in this toxic cycle, it can be extremely difficult to get out.

In partnership with the Centre for Responsible Credit, the multiple long-term conditions programme at Impact on Urban Health launched the Financial Shield in April 2021. The programme’s pilot project, ‘Back on Track,’ trials a way to prescribe debt and money management advice through GPs and helps people manage their finances and improve their wellbeing – to positive initial results.

However, the Financial Shield team are now finding that the cost-of-living crisis is already having devastating impact on people seeking help, with people’s budgets still in the negative even after receiving all relevant benefits. As a result, we are working together to extend the pilot project to take into account the increased challenges people are facing.

In this guest blog, Damon Gibbons, Executive Director of Centre for Responsible Credit, reflects on the complex reasons why tailored support for people struggling with their finances is needed now more than ever:

In the past weeks, we have received appointment requests from just over fifty residents, with the majority (80%) of these requests coming from people of Black and other minoritised ethnicities.  This is also we are working with Impact on Urban Health to extend our pilot project. We know that people urgently need support with their finances, and this will only get more intense as the price cap on energy rises in October.

In the past weeks, we have received appointment requests from just over fifty residents...This is why we are working with Impact on Urban Health to extend our pilot project. We know that people urgently need support with their finances, and this will only get more intense as the price cap on energy rises in October.

Damon Gibbons Executive Director of Centre for Responsible Credit

Time and again, residents across Lambeth and Southwark are reporting significant problems with paying for rent, Council Tax, and affording essentials, such as food. They are also struggling with a wide range of health problems, with a particularly high prevalence of poor mental health.

The impact of the cost of living crisis

Increasingly, income maximisation alone is not sufficient for many residents to be able to afford a reasonable standard of living or get out of the debt that they have accrued in recent years.  Our teams report an increasing number of residents with ‘negative budgets’ even after all benefit entitlements have been obtained. 

As the blogs from our Back on Track team workers indicate, these problems are not solely due to the recent cost-of-living crisis – although this has undoubtedly increased the financial pressures many are facing. The project is also seeing the effects of problems which extend much further back.  For example, one recent appointment request came from a woman unable to work for over a year since her diagnosis of breast cancer. 

The need for face to face support

There are often complex reasons for the financial problems that people are facing that are only revealed over time.  Observations from our front-line team include references to financial abuse within households, and to other complicated issues which take a relationship of trust for people to disclose. Seeing a person face-to-face is often key to this.  

And the demand for face-to-face support is high. Around half of all appointment requests made in the past two weeks have been for face-to-face appointments, even though the initial request for an appointment is submitted by residents through our website. As we have noted previously, many people can undertake basic customer journeys through digital channels, but ultimately need to be seen face-to-face before their problems can be fully understood and addressed.

As commissioners of support services are increasingly seeking to ‘channel shift’ from local community-based support into digital provision, there is a clear risk that many vulnerable residents will struggle to find the help they need to deal with their problems, and that health outcomes will suffer as a result. 

To ensure this project’s legacy we must be able to demonstrate why face to face, community-based services are so essential to supporting health, as well as establishing a business case and funding model to make sure services like the Financial Shield can continue.